From the Sector

Composites Evolution Ltd has teamed up with leading natural fibre reinforcement specialists Bcomp to launch a new range of flax-epoxy prepreg materials, designed to offer enhanced sustainability without compromising on performance.

Evopreg ampliTex™ prepregs combine Composites Evolution’s high-performance Evopreg epoxy resin systems with Bcomp’s award-winning ampliTex™ flax reinforcements, to deliver a family of materials which offer outstanding performance for component applications.

To reach the full performance of natural fibres, Evopreg ampliTex™ prepregs have been tailored to be compatible with Bcomp’s powerRibs™ reinforcement grid, enabling the same stiffness and weight as thin-walled monolithic carbon fibre parts while decreasing the CO₂ footprint by 85% and improving safety thanks to a blunt braking behaviour without dangerous debris or sharp edges.

Composites Evolution’s Sales & Marketing Director, Ben Hargreaves, explains further.
“Sustainability is an increasingly important factor for many of our customers - particularly those involved in motorsports and high-performance automotive applications. As you’d expect in these sectors though, sustainability can’t come at the expense of performance the two must go hand-in-hand. This is something that other prepreggers can struggle with, as natural fibres behave very differently to carbon or glass, for example.”

Customers would be able to understand the strengths and weaknesses of natural fibre composites, and to show where and how they can be adopted without the need for significant changes to existing composite component production processes.

One such customer is Retrac Group, whose composites division is one of the UK’s most experienced composites engineering companies across motorsports, automotive and aerospace. It recently used Evopreg ampliTex™ + powerRibs™ to produce a demonstrator bonnet panel for a race-bred supercar. Project Manager Alan Purves explains.

“We’re seeing a growing interest in flax fibre composites, particularly in the motorsports and niche vehicle sectors. It is therefore essential that we have developed an in-depth understanding of the processing requirements and performance capabilities of these materials, and are ready to respond to our customers' requirements. Being able to tap into the combined expertise and experience of both Composites Evolution and Bcomp is proving invaluable.”

Denim manufacturers employing Monforts technologies showcased their latest activities, including sustainable fabric manufacturing, new advances in fibres, dyes and chemicals, as well as process and supply improvements and recycling options, at Première Vision’s Digital Denim Week, held from July 5-9.

The users of Monforts equipment included AGI Denim (Pakistan), Azgard 9 (Pakistan), Berto (Italy), Bossa (Turkey), DNM (Turkey), Kilim (Turkey) and Orta (Turkey).

The new Naveena Denim Mills (Pakistan) Holistic collection, for example, employs a suite of sustainable materials such as organic cotton and post-consumer and post-industrial waste cotton that has been shredded and recycled at its in-house unit in Pakistan.

Supply chain transparency is also becoming increasingly important, and Turkey’s Bossa is now sharing information on its dyes, energy sources and recycled content use with its customers. For organic cotton in particular, Bossa provides QR codes with which brands can identify the names of individual farms and their locations, as well as details such as the origins of specific seeds and the use of irrigation by growers.

Turkey’s Orta’s new Denim Route – inspired by the historical Silk Road for trade between the East and West – is an interactive supplier map detailing the regions from which it sources cotton, dyestuff, chemicals and various fibres to complement its other transparency initiatives.

Meanwhile, a living and breathing piece of clothing that absorbs carbon dioxide while simultaneously producing oxygen was introduced at Digital Denim Week 2021 by Azgard 9 (Pakistan) .

Dibella's long-standing forwarding partner Hamacher was taken over by the sustainably committed logistics specialist Heppner at the end of 2018. The new constellation takes Dibella another step further in terms of climate-neutral transport: the logistics company, which originates from France, focuses on the environmentally friendly transport of goods and is investing heavily in a carbon dioxide-neutral vehicle fleet.

"With our first sustainability report, we introduced the monitoring of our carbon dioxide emissions. It turned out that the transport of our textiles produces the most climate gases. We have therefore consistently switched to sea freight and almost without exception do not ship goods by air. However, we still see a need for optimisation from the port of Rotterdam to the customer or to our warehouse. After the takeover of our long-standing forwarding partner Hamacher by the logistics specialist Heppner, there is now a breath of fresh air in our climate-friendly delivery initiative. The company is committed to environmentally friendly transports and a low-emission vehicle fleet. Together we now want to look for solutions to make the "last miles" of our deliveries climate gas neutral," says Ralf Hellmann, Managing Director of Dibella.

Departure into a clean future
Spedition Heppner, with its origins in Alsace, is a family-owned company with worldwide operations and 3,320 employees handling more than 72 million freight items annually. More than a decade ago, the logistics specialist began recording the carbon dioxide emissions released by its fleet of vehicles and steadily reducing them by switching to environmentally friendly energy sources. With a mix of gas, bio-fuel and electric drive, the discharge of greenhouse gases caused by the company's trucks is to be reduced by twenty percent by the year 2025. By 2050, the entire fleet should be diesel-free. To achieve a carbon dioxide-neutral footprint, Heppner is also testing hybrid forms of transport (rail, inland waterways, truck) as well as alternative delivery options (cargo bike).

TCV, Teijin’s carbon fiber business base in Vietnam, was established in May 2019. Teijin Limited announced that Teijin Carbon Vietnam Co., Ltd. (TCV) in Ha Nam, Vietnam, has started operating commercially to manufacture carbon fiber products including prepreg, a fiber sheet pre-impregnated with matrix resin as an intermediate material for composites. TCV initially will produce carbon fiber materials for sports and outdoor activities, including fishing, golf, bicycle and ice hockey goods, for markets in Southeast and South Asia and Asia-Pacific. Sales will be handled by TCV as well as carbon　fiber sales affiliates of Teijin operating in these markets.

Teijin’s sales affiliates in Singapore, Shanghai and Taipei work to identify demand opportunities as well as provide customer services in Asia. Internal collaborations between these companies and TCV shall strengthen Teijin’s presence in the upstream and downstream sectors of Asia’s fast-growing markets.

Increasingly strict environmental measures and the upgrading of environmental frameworks, such as sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, are expected to stimulate greater use of lightweight and highly rigid carbon fiber. Demands are growing in Asia, especially in the fields of sports and outdoor activities, industry and aerospace. COVID-19, for example, has led to new trends in sports and　outdoor activities, such as renewed interest in fishing due its compatibility with social-distancing protocols.

Hexcel, a global leader in advanced composites technologies, announces the successful maiden flight of a lightweight camera drone, developed using Hexcel HexPly® carbon fiber prepregs. The composite drone was developed by a team of students from the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria in Wels with composite materials supplied by Hexcel Neumarkt in Austria.

A team of six students in the university’s lightweight construction and composite materials course was responsible for the complete design, engineering, and manufacture of the camera drone over a period of 18 months. Hexcel materials and optimization of the composite engineering enabled the team to reduce the composite structural mass by an impressive 42% compared to similar drones.

Hexcel Neumarkt was one of eight industrial partners supporting the university team throughout the project, providing all carbon fiber prepreg materials used for the drone’s landing gear as well as the fuselage. The ultra-lightweight 32g landing gear was laid up and cured in the press, whereas the fuselage was autoclave cured by the student team using Hexcel HexPly M901 and HexPly M78.1 prepreg resin systems with a combination of woven and unidirectional carbon fiber reinforcements.

With the development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) as a key emerging market and innovation space in the transportation sector, Hexcel’s collaboration with the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria team not only creates an important link with the next generation of lightweight composite engineers but also highlights the weight saving and structural benefits of Hexcel composite material solutions.

"The massive weight saving achieved with their updated version of the camera drone is a fantastic achievement by the student team," said Michael Rabl, Dean of FH Wels of the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences. "The joint study not only illustrates the wide range of complex and innovative composite techniques present in the drone sector but also presents the opportunities that exist for further development in the wider Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and aerospace composites markets.”

Hexcel congratulates the project team which includes Lukas Weninger, Karl-Heinz Schneider, Jakob Schlosser, Matthias Thon, Marla Unter, and Simone Hartl on an exceptional piece of lightweight composite design and thanks them for showcasing the contribution of Hexcel materials with a presentation and drone flight. Johanna Arndt, research and technology group leader at Hexcel Neumarkt, said, “It was a great pleasure to work with the team who were very cooperative and self-motivated to succeed. Watching the drone just fly around the Neumarkt plant was just great.”

Hexcel manufactures a complete range of carbon fibers, dry carbon UD tapes, specialty reinforcements, prepregs, and honeycomb core materials, providing customized manufacturing options for new UAM applications that combine aerospace reliability with the high-rate production required. Hexcel composite materials are the ideal solution for the lightest and most efficient cost-competitive transportation vehicles of the future.

Marabu is one of the first ink manufacturers to achieve climate neutrality. All Marabu Business Units will, where possible, make a specific contribution to achieve the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with PROJECT GREEN and therefore participate in the Green Deal.

"We are safeguarding the future of the next generations and are proud that we have managed to be a climate neutral company from July 2021 with the Tamm and Bietigheim sites. All our products, whether printing inks or creative colours, are climate neutral, too," explains York Boeder, CEO Executive Committee. "Our so-called PROJECT GREEN combines all measures that are taking us on our journey to climate neutrality. Climate protection is a particular concern for us, to which we have made a binding commitment within the scope of an extensive sustainability strategy. In accordance with our Marabu Green Deal, we avoid and reduce emissions wherever possible, e. g. by using green electricity, energy-saving schemes, mobility concepts or environmentally friendly materials. We offset all unavoidable CO2 emissions by supporting internationally certified climate protection projects. We are continually implementing measures to improve our carbon footprint and update them annually to make their success measurable. We have therefore set ourselves the active goal of reducing our CO2 emissions by another 25 % by 2030."

For decades, Marabu has invested in the research and development of safe production processes, environmentally friendly products, and clean technologies with the aim of preserving the natural environment. Marabu has worked with Climate Partner to analyse all the CO2 emissions from the sites in Tamm and Bietigheim and determine its carbon footprint. Including all product-related factors such as raw materials and logistics, Marabu currently generates approx. 18,500 tons of unavoidable CO2 emissions. This value is the positive result of a number of climate-friendly measures pursued by Marabu, such as the early switch to green electricity in 2007.

Marabu's main activities to avoid and reduce CO2 emissions:

• Energy - Switching to green electricity from hydropower
• Mobility - Migration of the company's vehicles to electric and hybrid cars as well as in e-charging stations
• Production - Use of renewable energies and resource-efficient production processes
• Raw materials - Replacing critical substances with environmentally friendly alternatives for new and existing products
• Transporting - Climate-neutral freight carriers and lower-emission transport methods like shipping or road transport replace air freight wherever possible
• Product technology - Modern, low-emission products

Teijin Limited announced today that its Tenax™ carbon fiber prepreg has been adopted for a part of nacelle, or streamlined housing, for next-generation aircraft engine to be used by Airbus. A prototype of the nacelle part, which Nikkiso Co., Ltd. is developing for Airbus’s Propulsion of Tomorrow project, will be delivered to Airbus by the end of 2021.

The Tenax™ prepreg used for the nacelle part was developed especially for aircraft applications using high-performance and rapid-curing epoxy resin. Notably, the Tenax™ prepreg can be molded at a lower temperature and in a shorter time than conventional prepregs for aircraft applications. In addition to general autoclave molding, the Tenax™ prepreg also is suited to press molding for mass production, achieving excellent quality required for aircraft applications. Furthermore, it is compatible with automated fiber placement (AFP) therefore can be combined with automatic laminating technology and short-time molding to maximize production efficiency. The excellent productivity and cost efficiency of the Tenax™ prepreg were key reasons why it was adopted for Nikkiso’s nacelle.

Teijin is intensively accelerating its development of mid- to downstream applications for aircraft, one of the strategic focuses of its medium-term management plan for 2020-2022. Going forward, Teijin intends to further strengthen its carbon fiber and intermediate material businesses to contribute to increasing global sustainability, aiming to become a company that supports the society of the future.

• New air purification and sulfur recovery plant up and running at the Lenzing facility
• Another step closer to meeting sustainability and climate targets
• Self-sufficiency in raw materials further enhanced

Lenzing Group is continuing to make great strides toward achieving carbon neutrality across the Group. The successful completion and commissioning of an air purification and sulfur recovery plant at the Lenzing facility marks another milestone in the Group’s ambitious strategy. Lenzing has invested some EUR 40 mn in this project since construction began in 2019.

Using state-of-the-art technology, the plant will enable carbon emissions to be reduced by 15,000 metric tons at the Lenzing facility. This will also make the group more self-sufficient in securing vital raw materials for processing, which will bolster the site’s competitive standing in terms of sustainability.

“As a result of this investment, Lenzing has made further progress towards implementing its climate targets, while achieving much greater autonomy with regard to one of its core raw materials”, says Christian Skilich, Member of the Managing Board at Lenzing Group.

In 2019, Lenzing set the strategic target of halving its group-wide greenhouse gas emissions per ton of product by 2030. Its goal for 2050 is to achieve climate neutrality.

• Checkpoint becomes the first RFID label manufacturer to achieve ARC certification with NXP’s UCODE 9 IC

Checkpoint  Systems,  a  vertically  integrated  supplier  of RFID  solutions  for  retail,  has again  demonstrated  its  commitment  to  innovation  by becoming the first manufacturer to have an RFID inlay featuring the new NXP UCODE 9 IC certified by Auburn University’s ARC Laboratory.

The  announcement  follows  news  that  Checkpoint  recently  became  the  first  company  to achieve ARC-certification for its Impinj M700-based inlays. By setting another new standard for the  industry,  Checkpoint  are  enabling  retailers  around the  world to  further  improve  their inventory visibility, reduce costs, improve performance and increase their overall profitability.

Delivering enhanced performance
Delivering the same ARC certifications as the Vortex U8 (Spec G, K and Q), the new Vortex U9 goes one step further by meeting the requirements of Spec N.

All aspects of the retail supply chain benefit from the increased read and write sensitivity of the  Vortex  U9.    The  11%  increase  in  read  distance,  decreases the time  for  inventory  cycle counts in both sparse or densely populated environments.  It also increases the compatibility of  smaller  RFID  labels with  RFID  Point  of  Exit  (PoE)  or  loss  prevention systems.  The  write sensitivity is significantly improved which is beneficial when encoding labels in densely packed cartons during source tagging and bulk encoding operations.

Finally,  the  new  Vortex  U9  will  provide  retailers  with  added  value  when  it  comes  to sustainability. NXP’s UCODE 9 RFID IC is 18% smaller than its predecessor, reducing the carbon footprint on an individual IC basis.

Scott Mitchell-Harris, Group Vice President Checkpoint Systems, commented:  “The investment Checkpoint has made over the past few years in our manufacturing facilities is evident. We have one of the most talented development teams who are continually seeking out the latest technology with new ideas to deliver market leading label designs.”

Checkpoint’s Vortex range delivers high read rate performance in semi-automated  physical inventory control and RFID as EAS. Vortex is ISO18000-6C compliant and can be encoded and printed tocarry EPC data in several formats -RFID EPC global protocol, printed bar code and human readable text.

• Successful measures to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the safety and health of employees, customers and partners and securing sustainable business development
• Implementation of strategic investment projects and climate targets progressing on schedule – launch of first TENCEL™ branded carbon-zero fibers
• New level of transparency in the textile industry: introduction of blockchain technology
• Target setting: Lenzing raises the bar even higher and sets new sustainability goals

The Lenzing Group presented its Sustainability Report 2020 on April 22, 2021, World Earth Day. Featuring the title “Stand up for future generations”, Lenzing once again emphasized its commitment to taking responsibility beyond the products it makes. The non-financial report, prepared in accordance with the reporting standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Austrian Sustainability and Diversity Improvement Act (NaDiVeG) and reviewed by KPMG Austria GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungs- und Steuerberatungsgesellschaft, illustrates how the company is responding to the global challenges of our time.

The 2020 financial year of the Lenzing Group was largely dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Lenzing took short-term measures to safeguard its business operations and mitigate the effects of fiber prices and fiber demand which came under increasing pressure. The priority was to protect employees and strengthen long-term partnerships with suppliers and customers. Following the current fight against the coronavirus and its consequences, the company continues to move ahead determinedly to achieve its sustainability targets, also against the backdrop of such a difficult market environment.

With the implementation of its science-based targets, the Lenzing Group actively contributes to mastering the problems caused by climate change. In 2019, Lenzing made a strategic commitment to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent per ton of product by 2030. The overriding target is to be climate-neutral by 2050.*

The launch of the first carbon-zero TENCEL™ fibers certified as CarbonNeutral® products in accordance with The CarbonNeutral Protocol – the leading global framework for carbon neutrality – represents another important milestone from the reporting year. As of June 2021, Lenzing will also market the first VEOCEL™ branded lyocell fibers as certified CarbonNeutral® products.

Promoting the circular economy
Lenzing also sets standards for the entire fiber, textile and clothing industry with respect to the circular economy which is of such crucial importance in climate and resource protection. In order to enhance resource efficiency and offer a solution for the global problem of textile waste, the company developed the REFIBRA™ recycling technology. REFIBRA™ is the only technology in the world enabling the production of new lyocell fibers on a commercial scale from cotton scraps derived from manufacturing cotton clothing as well as from used garments. In this way, an important contribution is made to promoting circularity in the textile industry.*

New level of transparency in the textile industry
In addition to environmental protection, the issue of transparency along the supply chain poses a major challenge to the textile industry. Working in cooperation with TextileGenesis™, Lenzing offers an innovative solution to ensure greater transparency on the basis of blockchain technology. Following several successful pilot projects with renowned fashion brands, this digital platform was ultimately launched in 2020 to enable the traceability of textiles, from the fiber to all stages of production and distribution. Thanks to the innovative Fibercoin™ technology of the TextileGenesis™ platform, Lenzing and its partners are able to issue so-called “blockchain assets” in direct proportion to the physical fiber deliveries of the brands TENCEL™ and LENZING™ ECOVERO™. These digital assets function like a “fingerprint” and thus prevent adulteration.*

Target setting: Lenzing raises the bar even higher
The Lenzing Group operates in line with three strategic principles within the context of its “Naturally positive” sustainability strategy: partnering for change, advancing circularity and greening the value chain.*

*See attached document for more information..